08/15/2025
Always learning.
A near death experience!
I think it must be every trapper's nightmare to come upon a cat in a trap who for some reason has been injured or died. That was one of the main reasons we in our organization moved away from using what we called the "Slappy traps" – traps like the Havahart traps that have a trap door that slaps down hard at an angle when the cat triggers the trip plate. But because there have been instances of tails being caught when that door comes down so strongly, and worse yet when little kittens have followed mommy into the trap but were not out of the way of the door and were killed… we settled on the Tru Catch variety which have a gravity triggered door, coming down with less force and less likely to cause any type of injury.
No trap is perfect, and even the Tru Catch traps have a few kinks we've learned to work with. We learned the hard way that if you forget to slide the pull handle over the end properly at the back of the trap, the cats can simply push and get out. And we also learned that while it is fairly rare, a cat can pull a towel into the front of the trap and raise the rings on the door enough to squeeze out of that doorway! So we did learn to use zip ties to lock those traps once we have the cat trapped – then all is good.
However the other day something happened we had never seen - and which we hope to never see again! A cat trapping was in progress at a site with 15 cats, the caregivers were placing the traps into the garage as the cats were trapped, and had called their rescuer to come pick them up about an hour after the first group was ready for transport. Fortunately it had gone very quickly, because when the rescuer got there she could hear a cat yowling -and as everyone rushed into the garage, they saw a little cat had managed to lift one ring of the trap door and had her head out of the door. And then the ring had fallen back down, preventing the door from opening again – this little cat's neck was caught in the door! From the position of her head and neck in comparison to her body, we were afraid she had done permanent damage.
Obviously, there was no time to take a picture! – but by quickly placing a towel over her face, reaching over and lifting both rings slowly and lifting the door outward while gently pushing on her face, she was released back into the trap and was fine.
The caregivers who were trapping the cats did everything right – they had trapped the cats, they kept them covered, placed them into a dark quiet area and called for their transport. And the volunteer working with them did not think to say zip tie the door shut immediately - because in her years of experience, she had never seen this being an issue. Zip tying the doors for transport and for holding overnight is commonly done – it just hadn't occurred to her this could happen immediately.
Well, at least for that rescuer it will never happen again! Traps will be zip tied within minutes of trapping those cats! And we share the story because the best learning experiences come from mistakes – our own or others!
If you have a Trapping fiasco to share please do so in the comments – we read them and so do others, and your mistake may help to save another from the same situation🙌
